They Stood Still

A sermon I heard this morning was about Jesus' compassion to us who ache because of death, and how He took the death and the illness and the separation into Himself so as to give us life and health and communion. And I appreciated the sweet words. I did! And I listened with part of my brain.

But the other part was noticing the fact that those who were carrying the coffin stood still. They stood still and saw the Lord's salvation of this one man. Well, this man and his mother.

And when you look at Exodus 14, one of the lines the Israelites use to sass Moses was about "Weren't there any graves in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die?" And these guys in Luke's story were on their way to the graveyard.

And the crowd in Luke's story proclaimed Jesus to be a great prophet when He stretched out His hand and brought salvation. Just like Moses was known as the great prophet -- Moses who stretched out his hand over the Red Sea.

In the Exodus story, Jesus stood between the Israelites and the Egyptians all night, protecting His people from their enemies. In the Luke story, Jesus interfered between this man and death, driving back his death.

Now, some of my friends who are pastors like to make a connection between this story and the story of another Son who was carried to His burial and who was raised. So I figured I must be having wacky thoughts to be seeing all these connections to the story of the exodus. But maybe it's not so wacky. Maybe the story of the exodus IS actually another aspect of the story of the Son who died and was raised again. "How holy is this night when innocence is restored to the fallen, and joy is given to those downcast!"